So they waited on the shore in anxiety of spirit, watching the bright waters with eyes that ached with the intensity of the vigil, and Dupre hunted in the forest and over the sand dunes, among the high meadows that broke the heavy woods in this region, and down along the reaches of the water.
“Farther with each day!” thought Maren to herself. “Holy Mother, send the brigade!”
And Dupre echoed the thought in sadness of soul.
“More pain for her heart in each hour's delay. Would the trial were done!”
About three of the clock on the first day of waiting there came sounds of singing and a string of canoes rounded a bend of the shore at the south.
“M'sieu!” cried Maren swiftly; “who comes?”
Dupre, tinkering at the canoe overturned on the pebbly beach, straightened and looked in the direction she indicated.
He looked long with hand to eye, and presently turned quietly.
“Nor'westers, I think, Ma'amselle. They come from Fort William to the Wilderness.”
Back along the trail went memory with mention of the post on the distant shore of Lake Superior. How oft had she peeped with fascinated eyes from behind her father's forge at sturdy men in buckskins who spoke with the blacksmith about the wonders of the country of the Red River, and they had come from Fort William. She saw again the bustle and activity of Grand Portage, the comfortable house of the Baptistes. Once more she felt the old yearning for the unknown.
And this was it,--this gleaming stretch of inland sea, one man who stood by her and another who betrayed her with a kiss, yet who drew her after him as the helpless leaf, fallen to the stream, is whirled into the white destruction of the rapids.
She was looking down the lake with the sun on her uncovered head, on the soft whiteness of the doeskin garment, and to young Dupre she had never seemed so near the divine, so far and unattainable.
“Ma'amselle,” he said presently, “if these newcomers speak us, heed you not what I may say. There are times in the open ways when a man must lie for the good of himself--or others.”
The girl turned her eyes from the canoes, some twenty of them, to his face. It was grave and quiet.
“Assuredly,” she said after a moment's scrutiny. “Had I best hide in the bushes, M'sieu?”